What is Conversational Marketing and why is it so important for Retail?

“You never listen to me when I try to say something. I’ve told you I’m gluten intolerant several times, and you keep trying to sell me food containing gluten. I’ve told you I’m allergic to tomatoes and you keep offering me ketchup”.

Sound familiar? We’ve all had similar conversations with friends or family at least once in our lives and yes, it’s really annoying not to be heard, both in our personal lives and in business.

Conversational Marketing - communication is keyClear communication is the key to happy relationships, with friends, family, colleagues and customers. This is why conversational marketing is proving to be far more successful than traditional marketing.

Conversational marketing is a feedback-oriented approach to marketing to drive engagement, develop customer loyalty, grow your customer base, and, ultimately, grow revenue. Based on listening to your customer and potential customer’s needs, it’s all about being willing to incorporate feedback into your marketing strategy and communicate with your customer on a one-to-one basis.

It’s an effective way to distinguish your company’s brand while encouraging potential customers to engage with your product or service. It builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with customers and buyers.

The concept of conversational marketing is far older than the term. It’s what your favourite shopkeepers and corner florists used to do. It’s the same reason that the small local bakery your grandparents used to frequent is still flourishing. It’s about having conversations with your customers – listening to their stories, both their lows and their highs. It’s all about making a connection and using that information to better inform your marketing initiatives.

While store managers aren’t able to chat with all their customers in person, with the rapid growth of modern technology, customers still expect highly personalized, rapid communication. People love communicating with messaging because it’s fast, easy, and feels like a real conversation. It’s not surprising that 90% of consumers want to use some form of instant messaging to communicate with businesses rather than email (according to a survey from Twilio).

Conversational Marketing

At the same time, we are seeing the huge growth of instant messaging apps:

Mobile messaging app growth

Not convinced? 85% of consumers spend time in five popular apps, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. And according to Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger had 1.5 billion and 1.3 billion monthly active users during the last quarter of 2018, respectively, and this growth has continued. Facebook announced their first quarter figures in April this year:

  • Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.60 billion as of March 31, 2020, an increase of 10% year-over-year.
  • Family monthly active people (MAP) – MAP was 2.99 billion as of March 31, 2020, an increase of 11% year-over-year.

Growth in the number of people using Facebook’s “family” of products, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, has continued to climb:

facebook family monthly active user growth

Over 2 billion messages on Facebook Messenger are being exchanged monthly with over 65 million Facebook business pages. That’s a lot of conversations! Consumers are using these messaging platforms to receive content, shop, purchase and access support.

Not only do businesses need to be communicating on a variety of channels, they also need to be prepared to continue these conversations across all channels seamlessly.

traditional vs conversational marketing

Customers want to be treated as individuals and they want to engage on their own terms, on platforms of their choosing and at a time that suits them. And this is exactly what we do! ShopperLogiQ builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with your customers.

The Conversational Framework boils down to 3 steps:

  1. Engage
  2. Understand
  3. Recommend

Implementing ShopperLoqiQ doesn’t mean that you need to scrap all your previous marketing efforts to start from scratch. Rather, let our Retail Insights and Analytics strengthen your existing marketing and loyalty programs.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), ShopperLogiQ “learns” from high volumes of customer interactions, using data you already possess to provide you with several competitive advantages, including providing individualized offers and rewards that offer true value to your shoppers.

Take a look at an example of our Offer Insights dashboard to see how we can help you…

Offer Insights